Law enforcement agencies are increasingly equipping their law enforcement officers with portable recording devices. Such law enforcement agencies may have policies mandating that their law enforcement officers use these portable recording devices to record their interactions with the public. The recordings may serve to protect the public from improper policing, as well as protect law enforcement officers from false allegation of police misconduct.
In some implementations, a portable recording device that is worn by a law enforcement officer may be wirelessly connected to a mobile computing device that is in a law enforcement vehicle. In turn, the mobile computing device in the law enforcement vehicle may be connected to a network operations center (NOC) of a police department via a cellular network. In this way, the mobile computing device may serve as a communication relay point between the portable recording device and the NOC. The communication link may be used by the NOC to send device commands directly to the portable recording device. In response, the portable recording device may send data assets or live multimedia streams that are captured by the portable recording device to the NOC.
However, the maintenance of the wireless communication connection between the portable recording device and the mobile computing device may cause a significant power drain for the portable recording device. For example, maintaining such a constant Wi-Fi communication connection may demand a relatively high amount of energy output from a battery of the portable recording device. Further, the battery capacity of the portable recording device may be constrained by the small form factor of the device. In many instances, these factors may conspire to limit the effective operating time of the portable recording device.